Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat

Nice to find a point of common ground.

> But when people have gotten to the point of excluding those who are perfectly fine with "live and let live"

"those who are perfectly fine with 'live and let live'" is more or less the definition of the group that welcoming communities welcome. What exclusion are you referring to, here? Because it isn't what was discussed in the article, nor anything I've advocated, nor anything I've seen advocated elsewhere in the parts of this overall comment thread I've read.

> Your desire to ostracize -- there is no hate here for you?

I don't desire to ostracize; I desire an absence of hate. The ideal case would be that nobody has hate to spread; attempting to limit the damage done is a fallback position.

> I'm saying that how you propose to react against it is a bad idea and if it spreads will itself foster more injustice.

I'm not (here or anywhere) suggesting exclusion as a first and only resort. I'm suggesting that it's an entirely valid tactic for people unwilling to learn to "live and let live", to make things more pleasant and welcoming for those who do. To paraphrase the description of an anti-harassment team in one community I'm fond of, de-escalation is always the first resort.

> Ostracizing people from organizations deemed important by society and important to people's lives and careers carries a lot more consequence than some college aged kid posting some memes.

I don't have the impression that the entirety of the groups were excluded; it sounded, from the article, more like they were excluding ringleaders and people who specifically stirred things up. I might also hold a different opinion if there was some genuine sign of recognizing the screwup and attempting to improve that was being ignored in favor of putting on a show. But as long as we're talking about the consequences to people's lives and careers, also consider the other students they'll interact with over the coming years, not just those 10 students.

> Is it because they're the children of privilege?

Nope. And I'm not sure where in anything I posted you would have gotten that from.

Let's take this in another direction, please. You suggested elsewhere in this thread that you'd have been fine with some form of academic probation. That also suggests that you'd be fine with the consequences of such if the behavior continues. So if this is just a question of degree, then as far as I can tell we're on the same page and disagreeing about positions not actually held. As posted here and elsewhere, I'm similarly in favor of de-escalation and proportional responses. Bans and exclusions are near-last resorts, to use with 1) people who show no indication of recognizing and changing their behavior, or 2) people who would be put in a position where they could do a lot of damage. This isn't "screw up once and you're excluded for life", and if you thought that's what I was advocating, then let's just chalk it up to limitations of the medium and move on.

People can change, though it's not necessarily the job of everyone and every group in society to put up with them while they do.

I don't think it's unreasonable to use the term to refer to non-physical harm. I'm certainly not equating it to violence.

> I wonder if you're the sort of person who would advocate that a non-political group make a political statement, then make everyone sign or make some sort of pledge in support of it and throw out those who don't.

If you mean a political statement like the support of a political candidate or party: no, absolutely not. (And that's an area where I've definitely seen the kind of tribal behavior you mentioned, and I'm not a fan of it.)

If you mean a statement like a code of conduct, attempting to create a welcoming community (which I don't consider political), then: still no, but I'd require people to abide by it whether they signed it or not. For the purposes of the community, I'd prefer that they're doing so because they believe in it, but I'd settle for them following it because they want to participate in the community more than they want to be hateful.

> The chief emotional dishonesty here in our blue tribe

"our" is broadly speaking incorrect here, though I certainly share its values with respect to tolerance.

> is the degree to which hate and emotional aggression actually rule the tribal, othering behaviors

I've certainly seen some of that. Not a fan. But given a limited amount of time and energy with which to change the world, I don't see that as very high on the list of priorities.

Are you claiming that fear of ostracizing isn't in the same general category as the without-violence-but-convincing threat of violence? I don't see how you can honestly say they aren't both in the category of severe. (I've personally dealt with both.) There doesn't have to be any equivalence for my objection to stand. The factual, even physiological truth, is that both of these are highly emotionally severe and stressful. Any activism that cares about its moral compass needs to be very wary if it finds it's only accomplishing a doppelganger of its goals through such emotionally severe and threatening means. Something is just if it appeals to people's inner sense of justice. Accepting a facsimile of that because you can make people fearful enough to play along -- something is very wrong here!

But given a limited amount of time and energy with which to change the world, I don't see that as very high on the list of priorities.

The real trick is to be able to really change the world, instead of having it change you into one of the villains. Civilization has started to figure out that violent coercion only leads to destructive cycles. Our culture now needs to also start making the same realization about short-of-violent coercion.

I, and I expect the person to whom you reply, don't adhere to that assumption. I think that "just a joke", in this context, is the exhibition of profound naivete. And even if the speaker realizes it's a joke--the listeners often don't. See the /pol/ commentary elsewhere in this thread; /pol/ was "just joking" until those jokes were taken as articles of faith and became the core of a literally fascist movement.